New York
CNN
—
Elon Musk-owned X has agreed to pay to settle a lawsuit from his close ally President Donald Trump over Trump’s deplatforming following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, according to multiple reports that cite people familiar with the matter.
After the January 6 riot, social media companies such as X, then known as Twitter, and Meta suspended Trump from their platforms at the end of his first term.
“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter said on January 8, 2021.
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported details of the settlement. Court filings from this week show that both parties filed a motion to dismiss the appeal and pay their own costs. The dismissal was granted Monday. CNN has reached out to lawyers for both parties and X for comment.
Trump first sued Twitter and Jack Dorsey, the company’s CEO at the time, in July 2021, arguing that his speech was being unfairly censored.
Now, the platform has a new name and a new owner: Musk, who was chosen by Trump to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and reshape the federal workforce.
Musk, the richest man in the world, became a powerful ally for Trump during the presidential campaign last year. The settlement with X comes amid the new closeness between both Musk and Trump as well as the Trump administration and Big Tech.
In May 2022, Judge James Donato of the US District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the lawsuit. He said Twitter did not infringe on Trump’s First Amendment rights to free speech. Trump appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where the case was pending.
After Musk completed his purchase of Twitter in October 2022, he reinstated Trump.
X is the second major social media platform to settle a lawsuit with Trump over the insurrection. Last month, Trump signed a settlement agreement to end a similar lawsuit he brought against Meta, after the company had suspended his account on its platform in the aftermath of the January 6 riot.
According to the preliminary draft of the settlement, Meta is required to pay out roughly $25 million – of which $22 million would go toward a fund for Trump’s presidential library.
Tech leaders have worked – and paid – to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration, hoping to curry favor even if their relationships were more combative in his first term.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and attended the event alongside nominated Cabinet members. He also scrapped third-party fact checkers and diversity, equity and inclusion programs – two causes Trump has railed against. The company also named Trump ally and UFC boss Dana White to its board of directors last month.
A person familiar with the matter previously told CNN that Trump and Zuckerberg specifically discussed the lawsuit when he visited Trump’s club in November following the election.
Trump also sued Google, which owns YouTube, and its CEO, Sundar Pichai, in 2021 over similar allegations.
Kaitlan Collins and Brian Fung contributed to this report.